Cécile McLorin Salvant,  ‘Booke of Ayres’
The Sohmen Concert Hall, The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, University of Oxford, 29th May 2026

Cécile McLorin Salvant - Vocals
Sullivan Fortner -  Harpsichord, Keyboard
Duŝan Balarin -  Theorbo, Lute
Emi Ferguson -  Flute
Yassushi Nakamura -  Double Bass
Keita Ogawa -  Percussion

“Part of my practice is imagining musical family trees and learning from the influences of my influences. Growing up, I wanted to be an opera singer. Opera led me to Baroque music, which led me to early music. I had a similar path with American music. I gravitate towards forgotten songs, early or maligned instruments, and languages and performance styles on the brink of extinction. What I am interested in is exploring, celebrating, and making fun of desire, divulging secrets, dredging up the past, looking under the rug.” – Cécile McLorin Salvant

Three time Grammy winner of the best jazz vocal album award, Cécile McLorin Salvant came on stage in an Elizabethan style white ruff and wearing a period black smock/frock. John Dowland’s ‘Epistle to the Reader’ from his ‘Third and Last Booke of Songs or Ayres’ (1603) was projected onto Sohmen Concert Hall’s back wall. All the signals were there that this wasn’t going to be a straight ahead jazz event.

It was in fact the first performance outside of North America of McLorin Salvant ‘s ‘Book of Ayres’ a project that situates early music alongside folk traditions, baroque influences and a jazz sensibility.

McLorin Salvant had already had a fascinating pre-concert conversation with Schwarzman Centre Cultural Fellow and fellow Grammy award winner, the celebrated folk singer Rhiannon Giddens. During it McLorin Salvant explained that when at Aix -en-Provence conservatoire she’d ended up studying opera , jazz ( after she’d found the conservatoire’s one jazz tutor in the basement) and early music all at the same time, but that it had taken her fifteen years to put early music into a programme.

Now that she has done so, to use the vernacular, she seems to be really going for it. The majority of the set was songs by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) who himself blended styles incorporating French and Italian elements into his predominately English music, and by John Dowland ( 1563-1626). The performance also included two or three of McLorin Salvant’s own compositions.

To help her play the songs McLorin Salvant had with her two musicians steeped in early and Baroque music in Duŝan Balarin (lute, theorbo)  and Emi Ferguson (flute), while notable jazz pianist and electric keyboardist Sullivan Fortner largely forsook both instruments and played harpsichord on which he debuted only in late 2023, for nearly every song
(https://www.facebook.com/sullivanfortnermusic/posts/sullivan-on-harpsichord737017768237582/).

The line up was completed by the excellent rhythm section of jazz double bassist Yassushi Nakamura and Grammy award winning ‘world’ percussionist Keita Ogawa.

I have little knowledge of early and Baroque music but as far as I could tell McLorin Salvant and Fortner, crisp but restrained on harpsichord, played it straight, tending not to deviate far if at all from the original melody.

The songs were delivered however with tremendous vocal dynamism and character, McLorin Salvant going from the coquettish sweetness at her top of her range to rich Sarah Vaughan influenced lower tones in an instant and even for a moment to a mannish bass profundo, and then back up again. She made assured use of phrasing, and the microscopic silences between the notes were as telling as the words which she sang with crystal clear clarity and no vibrato.

Dowland’s ‘Flow Not So Fast Fountains’, Purcell’s ‘I Attempt From Love’s Sickness to Fly’, Michel Lambert’s ’ D’un feu secret’ (1689), which McLorin Salvant said was the first early music song she was introduced to, were all beautiful songs beautifully sung and played.

They were all intimate songs as indeed was McLorin Salvant’s spiky, lyrically clever composition, ‘Obligation’. Arguably intimacy was the unspoken theme of the concert. McLorin Salvant is not just a superb singer but a superb performer who ‘sings’ expressively with her hands and eyes as well as her voice, and with a lot of wit. She dispensed with the mic stand early, often came to the front of the stage and seemed to direct the songs to just one or two people in the audience.

The chamber music set up and the delicacy and restraint with which her excellent musicians played created the impression of being at a musical salon rather than in a 450 to 500 capacity concert hall, all the more so when the accompaniment was just a single instrument. Percussionist Keita Ogawa epitomised the chamber music approach, creating a multitude of textures by playing his kit almost exclusively with just his hands.

McLorin Salvant’s version, helped by her Haitian father, of a female troubadour’s song that she sang part in Haitian Kreyòl and part in the near extinct language of Occitanian was not only a rich example of her doing what she summarised as “looking under the rug” (see quote at the start of this piece) but the infectious Caribbean rhythms made it a showstopper.

Also it was jazziest number in a wonderful concert that crossed or defied genre boundaries. The excellent acoustics of the new concert hall made a significant contribution and even the projected images were good. Cécile McLorin Salvant was fantastic and her musicians almost as superb. Overall it was a bold, superbly executed and highly enjoyable event.

Thanks to Matt Pickles for arranging the ticket for me.

Cécile McLorin Salvant with the BBC Concert Orchestra is at The Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Southbank Centre as part of The EFG London Jazz Festival on 22nd November
2026.

COLIN MAY

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